Hong Kong: Hong Kong protest leaders announced plans for another mass rally on Sunday, escalating their campaign against a China extradition bill a day after police cleared them from the streets using volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets.
The move sets up a fresh confrontation with the city’s leaders who have refused to withdraw the proposed law and have the staunch backing of Beijing, which described the protests as “riots”.
The international finance hub was rocked by the worst political violence since its 1997 handover to China on Wednesday as tens of thousands of protesters who had surrounded the city’s parliament were dispersed in chaotic scenes.
Sporadic demonstrations broke out again on Thursday, with occasional scuffles with police, but crowds were much smaller and there was no repeat of the running battles of the day before.
The government has indefinitely postponed a parliamentary debate on the bill which had been scheduled for Wednesday and was the trigger for Wednesday’s violence.
But demonstrators have vowed no let up in their campaign until the law is abandoned entirely, calling for a rally on Sunday and a city-wide strike on Monday.
“(We) will fight until the end with Hong Kong people,” said Jimmy Sham from the Civil Human Rights Front, the main protest group, adding that they had applied for permission to hold the weekend rally.
“When facing ignorance, contempt and suppression, we will only be stronger, there will only be more Hong Kong people,” he told reporters.
The CHRF organised a huge rally against the bill on Sunday which they said drew more than a million people.
But it has little control over groups of largely leaderless, young crowds of more hardline demonstrators who have been at the vanguard of confrontations with police.
The police response has drawn criticism from a range of influential bodies including lawmakers, journalists and legal groups, with calls for an independent inquiry into “excessive force” from a top legal body that helps elect the city’s leader.
The Hong Kong Bar Association also weighed in, saying the police force “may well have overstepped its lawful powers” with “wholly unnecessary force against largely unarmed protesters who did not appear to pose any immediate threat to the police or the public”.
But Beijing said it fully supported the city authorities’ handling of the protests.
“What happened in the Admiralty area was not a peaceful rally, but a riot organised by a group,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters, referencing the
district where the worst violence took place.
Police chief Stephen Lo defended his officers on Thursday, saying they “had no choice but to escalate the use of force”. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
